Equal Opportunity Clothing Swaps

Clothing swaps have gotten to be a habit in my social circle. So much so that my friend Sarah's boyfriend Andrew was recently moved to muse on the possibilities of clothing swaps for dudes. In my experience, the clothing swap is a largely female pastime. (I've held clothing swaps attended by dudes, but there was only so much good it could do them since they weren't looking for dresses.) This is a pity. After all, the clothing swap seems made to order for those dudes who dislike shopping.

To ameliorate this, Andrew and I  have worked out some rules for the dude clothing swap. Now all a dude has to do is take the initiative, invite dude friends over and trade those t-shirts and hoodies that someone close to them may or may not be trying to get to them to throw out. This way they go to caring homes. (The hoodies, not the dudes.)

Certainly, you can do a clothing swap in any way you want, or follow the lady-centric rules available on the Internet. But if you are feeling awkward about group nudity or showing open concern for your sartorial well-being these suggestions will smooth things over:

1. For each piece of clothing you take you have to shotgun a beer. (My friend Carrie objected that this could get dangerous fast, but, admit it, you are picky and your friends don't have that many good clothes.)

2. You can't drink unless you take clothes. (No sitting and watching, Pervo.)

3. For each article of ugly-ass-unlovable clothing you bring that no one wants you will have to remove a piece of your own outfit and go home that way.

4. If there is a dispute over a garment up for grabs, the dude who puts his crotch on it first gets to keep it. (I came up with this one. Andrew, whose idea this was in the first place, wasn't so sure. Maybe that rule should be optional.)

5. Send me pictures.

(As a side note, if you are a lady in the Atlanta area and you would like to host a clothing swap in accordance with these rules, contact me immediately.)

Freetail Therapy

Clothing swaps (naked lady parties if you're nasty) are an at-home miracle of social engineering. You bring your unwanted clothes and then try on all the unwanted clothes everyone else brought. Usually there is some arrangement or order to this. Or, at least, the piles of clothes are organized by size and general garment type. Other than that, they are often free for alls, but they tend to be social rather than anti-social occasions. Far more so than the average party where everyone may or may not know each other. For one thing, girls tend to strip in front of each other, so you have twice the normal number of exposed tattoos for conversation pieces, and you're naked, so no one can really get away with acting too snotty. Plus, if everyone gets naked then you know everyone is pretty down.

Women who have never been to a clothing swap party are often skeptical: "What if there isn't anything in my size?", "What if everyone else brings crappy clothes and I give away nice ones?" All I can say is that they have a way of working out just fine.

The best thing about an event like this for a chronically misguided person like myself is the benefit of unsolicited advice. That's another thing that just sort of happens at these things. They have a way of marrying the wisdom of the crowd with a personal shopper so that everyone receives the equivalent of expert (and often psychologically insightful) advice: "You keep trying that on with different things. Just take it."

Good clothes sometimes fall into the wrong hands and end up looking like bad clothes. Clothing swaps are a natural way of setting things to rights. This last one was the best yet. I left in a complete new outfit. Behold.